UPS Jet Crash in Alabama is Latest Fatal Cargo Accident

UPS, the world’s largest package-delivery company, maintains an air hub in Louisville. Photographer: Ken James/Bloomberg

Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) -- The deadly crash of a United Parcel
Service Inc. plane that struck a hillside short of an Alabama
runway yesterday is the latest for an air-cargo industry that’s
experienced many more fatal wrecks than U.S. passenger carriers.

The accident involving Atlanta-based UPS, the world’s
largest package-delivery company, was the second with fatalities
this year and fourth since 2009 for a U.S.-registered cargo
hauler, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

“We have not seen that kind of number in passenger
airplanes,” John Cox, president of Washington-based Safety
Operating Systems and a former airline pilot, said in an
interview.

The rate of fatal cargo accidents around the world was
eight times higher than on passenger planes from 2002 to 2011,
according to a study by the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority
published in June.

The UPS plane, an Airbus SAS A300-600F, broke apart and
burst into flames yesterday while approaching the airport in
Birmingham, Robert Sumwalt, a member of the U.S. National
Transportation Safety Board, said at a briefing.

The two pilots were killed. UPS declined to name them in a
joint statement with the Independent Pilots Association union.

Other Crashes

Yesterday’s accident followed the crash of a Boeing Co.
747-400 operated by National Air Cargo Group Inc. shortly after
takeoff from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan on April 29. All
seven crew members aboard were killed, according to the NTSB.

Two UPS pilots died Sept. 3, 2010, in Dubai after a fire
broke out in their 747-400 carrying a load of lithium batteries,
according to the United Arab Emirates General Civil Aviation
Authority.

A crash in Narita, Japan, near Tokyo on March 23, 2009,
killed two pilots on a FedEx Corp. MD-11 after a hard landing
and fire, according to the AviationSafetyNetwork, a website that
tracks aviation accidents.

No U.S.-based passenger carriers have had a fatal accident
since Feb. 12, 2009, when 49 people died in a crash near
Buffalo, New York, of a regional turboprop plane operated by
Pinnacle Airlines Corp.’s former Colgan unit, according to the
NTSB. A man on the ground also died in the accident.

Three passengers died aboard an Asiana Airlines Inc. plane
that crashed short of the San Francisco International Airport
runway on July 6.

In yesterday’s crash, UPS Flight 1354 was en route to
Birmingham from Louisville, Kentucky, the company’s air hub. It
flew over a subdivision north of the runway moments before the
accident, Sumwalt said.

Photos from the scene showed the freighter scorched and the
ground strewn with packages from its cargo bay.

‘150 Feet’

“I’m talking about 150 feet and he would have hit my house
and my family would have been dead,” Freddy Carter, whose home
is near the crash site, said in an interview.

Investigators will examine whether the pilots, who were
landing shortly before dawn, were suffering from fatigue, Cox
said.

Cargo airlines were exempted from rules mandated by
Congress that restrict how many hours passenger-airline pilots
can fly, particularly during overnight hours. The rules go into
effect in 2014.

The IPA and the Air Line Pilots Association, which
represents FedEx Corp. pilots, have pushed Congress to enact
legislation to require the same standards for cargo pilots.

“Current science leaves no doubt that airline pilots don’t
experience fatigue differently based on whether they fly
passengers or cargo in their aircraft,” Lee Moak, ALPA’s
president, said in a Jan. 8 press release.

Risk Factors

In addition to operating more flights at night, when
fatigue is most prevalent, cargo airlines have other risk
factors, such as flying into smaller airports without as many
safety protections as larger ones and carrying more dangerous
freight, Cox said.

UPS Flight 1354 yesterday was landing to the south on the
Birmingham’s airport Runway 18, which lacks an instrument-landing system to provide planes with a glide slope guiding them
to the runway, according to pilot-information website
AirNav.com.

Pilots on the Asiana plane that crashed short of the runway
also didn’t have a glide-slope indicator when their 777 flew too
low and slammed into a seawall.

Recovery Delayed

In yesterday’s crash, smoldering fires hindered
investigators’ attempts to reach the plane’s flight-data and
cockpit-voice recorders, Sumwalt said. Investigators are
optimistic they can recover the recorders soon, he said.

The cockpit came to rest 200 yards (183 meters) from the
spot where the plane initially hit the ground, Sumwalt said. The
bulk of the rest of the plane, including the wings and the tail
section, skidded another 75 to 80 yards closer to the runway, he
said.

“It appears that the aircraft went through some trees and
then initially impacted towards the bottom of the hill where
there is evidence of fire,” he said. “Then it went up the hill
where it came to the top of the hill and came to its final
resting point.”

Hills rising from the end of Birmingham’s Runway 18 may
have contributed to the crash, said Kevin Hiatt, chief executive
officer of the Alexandria, Virginia-based Flight Safety
Foundation and a former Delta Air Lines Inc. pilot who said he
has landed on that strip “dozens of times.”

The hillside would have been veiled by darkness when the
plane landed, creating what pilots call a “black hole” that
may have obscured the dangers of getting too low, Hiatt said.

“The hillside there isn’t a radical hillside, but it does
rise up,” Hiatt said. “It increases the risk.”

No Call

The UPS pilots didn’t make a distress call to the airport
control tower, Sumwalt said. The lack of a call suggests the
pilots weren’t aware of an onboard fire or other issue that
could have led to the accident.

Airbus said it was assessing the situation, and Pratt &
Whitney, the United Technologies Corp. unit that made the
engines on the jet, said it would work with accident
investigators.

UPS fell 0.3 percent to $87.45 in New York yesterday as
broad U.S. stock indexes retreated. The shares rose 19 percent
this year.